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Expected Completion Date: 
May 2021

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Major Fields:
Macroeconomics, Economic Methodology, Economic History, History of Economic Thought, Monetary Economics

Dissertation Title:
The Rise of Neo-Fascism in the 21st Century

Dissertation Abstract:
My dissertation research blends political economy with fascist studies to tell the history of neo-fascism into the 21st century when it saw a significant resurgence. The first chapter tells the history of neo-fascism in the context of the global macroeconomy and the study of historical fascism. The second chapter samples nine neo-fascists to define their ideology, allowing for all the weird nuances of fascist thought. The final chapter tells a financial history of thirteen alt-right nonprofits in the United States with attention to their common fates during the Great Recession and the rise of the alt-right's media prominence.

Contact Email:
isaam829@newschool.edu

Expected Completion Date of PhD:
May 2021

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Major Fields:
Applied Macroeconomics, Economic Growth and Distribution and U.S. Political Economy.

Dissertation Title:
A Sectoral Approach to Measuring US Growth, Inequality and Output Gap.

Profile:
My dissertation consists of three essays on measurement of US growth, inequality, and output gap from a sectoral perspective.  

In my first essay, I argue that rapidly growing financial, healthcare, and professional-business services are a means to the end of economic welfare, and, therefore, they are better treated as intermediate consumption of households. I adjust real output growth by using the Input-Output data of the Bureau of Economic Analysis over 1947-2017, and find a deeper slowdown in growth post-1973, particularly after 2000, than the conventional GDP.     

My second essay estimates the impact of adjustments on income distribution from 1985 to 2015. By using consumer expenditure survey data of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, I find that labor income finances more than 90% of the US household expenditures on finance, healthcare and professional-business services. The adjusted labor share, defined as the compensation of employees over GDP, declines more than the conventional labor share over 1985-2015.     

In my final essay, I shift from sectoral sources of actual GDP to potential GDP, and estimate output gaps of 20 US industries over 1948-2019 by using Bayesian statistical inference. I find a generally negative output gap at the aggregate except for the second half of the 1960s, and a persistent excess-capacity since 1990. My findings show that secular stagnation is not an inevitable feature of the US economy, and it can be avoided by eliminating the chronic output gap through demand supporting policies.

Contact Email:
tercr677@newschool.edu

Expected Completion Date of PhD:
May 2021

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Profile:
I am an emerging development theorist with a feminist focus. My dissertation is theoretical in scope and studies women’s role as mothers. My research develops a theory of motherhood within a Marxist-Feminist-Capability theoretic framework to address the dual tragic conflict of capability suppression and economic oppression within motherhood.

Major Field: 
Development Economics 

Dissertation Title:
Three Theoretical Essays on Motherhood within the Capabilities Approach, Social Reproduction Theory and Development: Which Way Now to Achieve Social and Economic Justice for Mothers in Capitalist Societies?

Dissertation Abstract:
Motherhood, an indispensable biological and social reproductive human development process is often also a source of capability suppression and economic oppression for women in capitalist societies. By capability suppression I mean the limitation of a mother’s capabilities to function by virtue of the instrumental role of childrearing. By economic oppression I mean the expropriation of value from a mother's reproductive labor by capitalists while undervaluing such work. The capabilities approach and social reproduction theory add great explanatory power to the problems of capability suppression and economic oppression. That is, while the feminist philosophical account of the capabilities approach emphasizes what women universally should be able to “do and be” (and would seek as a matter of urgency in human development and public policy the promotion of central capabilities for mothers using bargaining strategies), Marxist feminist social reproduction theory emphasizes the fair economic valuation of women’s reproductive work (and would seek as a matter of urgency in political economy and wealth redistributive policy, the promotion of wages for a mother’s unpaid reproductive labor).

Though the two theoretical frameworks have fundamental differences, this theoretical research synthesizes both frameworks into an integrated theory to complement, reinforce, and sustain each other's end goal. This synthesis brings a combined new and innovative perspective to addressing the socio-economic struggles of mothers in capitalist societies and culminates in a feminist “consensus” that elucidates a more effective path of development for mothers. My research introduces an original thesis on the triple day of motherhood and creates a Marxist-feminist-capability theoretic framework for the study of mothers.

Contact Email:
tontohe@newschool.edu

Expected Completion Date:
May 2021

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Major Fields:
Economic Development, Political Economy of Agrarian Change, Post-colonial Capital, Informal Economy, Economics of Caste and Gender

Dissertation Title:
Agrarian Question of India: Past, Present, Future

Profile: 
My dissertation examines the role of agriculture in the Indian experience of post-colonial capitalist development through the lens of the Agrarian Question. Drawing on Byres (1986) and Sanyal (2014), I argue that resolutions of the classic Agrarian Question, identified with the transformation in agricultural productive forces and relations which enable capitalist industrial development, are essentially processes of Primitive Accumulation. In this light I critically examine the nature and impact of the Green Revolution in India as a potential resolution to the Agrarian Question.

Based on this theoretical-historical understanding, I examine contemporary agrarian class relations and practices of diversification in post-Green Revolution northern India through empirical and ethnographic field-based data. I argue that despite uniform adoption of Green Revolution methods and investment in labor-saving techniques, agricultural producers are better described as petty commodity producers than as capitalist farmers because production is motivated by the logic of household reproduction and is reliant on the use of unpaid family labor. Further, I argue that while most agricultural households are diversified into non-agricultural economic activities and in particular into wage employment, landowning upper-caste households are able to diversify into formal salaried employment, whereas landless lower-caste households are confined to precarious daily-wage work. This segmentation along lines of caste, landownership, and type of employment, is characterized as Shah & Lerche’s (2018) ’conjugated oppression.’

After completing my dissertation in Spring 2021, I plan to use my fieldwork data for an analysis of the reliance of agricultural profits in Bas Dudha on unpaid gendered family labor and underpaid migrant labor. I also intend to work on a comparative analysis of theorizations of contemporary petty commodity production by Harriss-White and Sanyal.

Contact Email:
yadas719@newschool.edu